1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to shipment management. More specifically, the present invention relates to using an integrated database for tracking shipping information.
2. Description of Related Art
There are presently a variety of ways to ship an item. The shipping vendors available to a user may include various well-known national and international vendors, such as FedEx®, United Parcel Service (UPS®), United States Postal Service (USPS®), and DHL®, as well as various local couriers. The availability of shipping services by shipping vendors may vary from location to location. For example, a local courier may only provide service within a particular city.
A shipment may also be sent using a variety of shipping options, including date and time restrictions, packaging options, recipient acknowledgement, and the like. For example, a package may need to be delivered in a padded envelope by a certain date and acknowledged by recipient signature. The availability of various shipping options may also differ from vendor to vendor. For example, a particular vendor may not offer overnight shipping, some vendors require overnight shipments to be ready for pick-up by a certain time, some vendors may have size and weight restrictions on overnight shipments, etc. In addition to size and weight restrictions, various other package specifications (e.g., shape, contents of package, value of contents) may also limit the availability of shipping options.
The variety of available shipment options and shipping vendors allows users to tailor their shipments in a variety of ways. Further, having multiple options for shipping vendors allows for price shopping and alternatives should a first shipping vendor be unable to ship a package or provide a certain shipping option. However, these multiple options for shipment can complicate the record-keeping and account reconciliation processes.
A shipment is typically associated with a variety of information from a variety of sources. Such information may include shipping label information, invoice information, etc., associated with multiple shipping vendors. Presently, accounting processes, such as record-keeping and account reconciliation, may often require a user to record information concerning each shipment by each shipping vendor, receive an invoice from each shipping vendor, review each invoice, compare each invoice entry against shipment records, and find matches. A user may further be asked to allocate shipping costs from multiple shipping vendors to the appropriate accounts, departments, clients, etc. In addition, a user may need to input shipping label and/or invoice information into a cost recovery or other accounting system. Managing information in such a manner may be inefficient, time-consuming, and prone to error.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for improved systems and methods for using an integrated database for shipping information.